


Tomb Raider: Odyssey [HIATUS]

by rosesoftheday



Category: Tomb Raider (Video Game)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Ancient Egypt, Character Study, Egyptology, F/F, Gen, Original Character(s), Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-21
Updated: 2015-03-21
Packaged: 2018-03-18 21:37:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3584982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosesoftheday/pseuds/rosesoftheday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris had a real plot? I do plan to continue this eventually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tomb Raider: Odyssey [HIATUS]

Lara Croft feels a deep and grounding peace, listening to the birds in her garden. The song peppers into the room in short bursts of high, clear noise; it comes in with the gentle brush of cool spring air that winds cold fingers through her mouse-brown hair, smelling of leaves; the song punctuates the silence and the stillness of the study where a young archaeologist has set up a weight bench in front of the open bay windows. The black earth outside is moist and crumbling; the grass, manicured, is almost transparent green; the sky, blue streaked with only a few bright wisps of cloud, the sun hidden behind some forsaken gable in the northern wing. A well-maintained garden wall cordons the grounds from the summering moor beyond.

Croft has paused mid-rep; seated on the thin cushion, her bare feet half-buried in the plush carpet, elbow locked to her knee, she allows a green dumbbell to dangle from her fingers like a gnawed bone, her body rigid in the way that crouching cats are, her dark eyes dancing from one point to another like a typist in transcription. She can see every bird, its otherness in the trees jarring as a rescue flare, each note of song bright as a muzzle flash. She could never do that before Yamatai, but now the watching and the knowing is as instinctive to her as the breathing that pulses low in her stomach, below the ribs, silent to the ear.

She hears her roommate coming much like some children hear train wires sing; the air moves careless, the birds keep crying, but some electrical presence moves down the hallway towards her, drawing a shiver through her ribs. Her ears catching the faint creak of a distant floorboard and the knob twists, the door creaks, and Sam appears, looking awake for this time of the morning; eyes bright but unlined, thin shoulders carrying light and the dense folds of a cut up gray sweatshirt, wearing  harem-looking lounge pants that Lara can never place on the acceptable fashion spectrum. She smiles and speaks.

“Hey.”

“Hey there. What’s up?”

Sam crumples the corner of the paper she holds in one hand, resting in the crook of her waist.

“Nnnnothing. I wanted to ask you something.”

 Lara hears the part of her that is nervous about going on.

“Yeah?”

“You’ve, uh, been here a minute.” Sam gestures with the hand that holds a white envelope, painting an invisible stroke across the walls of the room with her pale arm. She seems impossible and small and strange standing in the doorway of Lara’s father’s office, a bright spot amid the dark wood paneling, black and white in a room dripping in red and gold in the classic Edwardian style.

Lara nods but doesn’t say anything, waiting for Sam to go on.

“And, uh, I figured you would want to get out eventually…”

Lara lets a tiny smile act as the invitation to continue.

“… Aaand get back to archaeologizing? You’re not making this easy on me.”

Lara smiles, genuine, turning her gaze to the carpet.

“No, I’m not, I’m sorry.” She rubs at the side of her head where there is still a ropy scar, one of many, under her hair. “I didn’t expect you to get sick of the off-season so soon.”

“Is that what you’re calling your essential withdrawal from the field?” Sam speaks crisply, and Lara doesn’t miss it.

“Mm. What have you drawn up for me?”

Sam shakes the envelope like a developing photo and saunters into the room, kicking off her black rubber flipflops as she steps onto the rug.

“I’m SO glad you asked. How do you feel abooooout…. Egypt?”

Lara blinks. “Egypt? That’s… a little bit out of my wheelhouse, don’t you think?”

Sam squints at her. Lara clears her throat.

“Sam, I don’t really… study… Egypt.” She tries to put her hands in her lap and everything gets tangled. “Not all archaeologists work alike. I researched Yamatai for MONTHS before we left, it’s not exactly transferrable effort—“

Sam puts a finger on her lips. Lara looks indignant.

“My dad knows some of the faculty from Waseda University, and they’re sending a small team to follow up on an excavation from a few years ago in conjunction with the American University in Cairo. They’ve had a lot of problems with looters in the area, so they’re looking for people familiar with security AND survey archaeology to help run their daily operations. Naturally, we’re going.”

Midsentence, Lara had pushed her hand away and now held it loosely near her face.

“Sam, there’s no point to this. This isn’t my realm of interest, this has nothing to do with any of my current research-“

“That is EXACTLY the point.” Sam takes Lara’s outstretched hand in both of her own. “You need to go back eventually, and you sure as HELL need a fresh start after what happened. It doesn’t matter what we do as long as we’re doing something, and Egypt has been so combed over by stuffy white guys that it’s not likely we’re gonna find anything crazy there.”

Lara smiles, soft and sad. She sandwiches Sam’s hands with her own, resting them on the bench between them, and breathes out a sigh which turns into a laugh.

“You know how I feel about having things planned for me.”

“I know. That’s why I did it.”

 “And I don’t suppose I can back out?” She squints, familiar with the way things go with Sam. “The tickets are non-refundable, we leave tomorrow, someone’s actually at the airport waiting for one of my kidneys—“

Sam scowls.  “The tickets are theoretically refundable, and paid for by yours truly. We leave in October, because nobody with two brain cells to rub together is going to volunteer to excavate in Egypt in summer. And I don’t know what you do or don’t have worked out with your organs, but I didn’t make any plans for them.”

She’s leaned forward. Their eyes meet, and Lara sees a steely and patient glint in them that she’s not sure she recognizes in a Sam that’s sober. Sam pushes her hair out of her face. “I wanna help you make this right. I don’t like seeing you like this all the time… even if some of the results are alright.”

She smiles and pokes Lara’s exposed side, her muscles standing out in warm piano-wire waves. Lara screws up her face and flexes her abdominals, causing one side to wiggle eerily.

“Ew! Oh my god, stop.” Lara grins. “Alright.” She stops moving and picks up another weight and starts reviewing what she knows about northern Africa. In that minute, Lara feels, obliquely, the weight of her decision; the finality of having made a choice dissolves it quickly but it still sits for a second in her stomach, burning away like potassium in water until the mundanities of the rest of the day turn it into vapor.


End file.
